


What Does Love Smell Like?

by waroftheposes



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, M/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 08:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7837192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waroftheposes/pseuds/waroftheposes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Lynch," Adam asked, eyes following one particular cupid, who looked very much like an evil imp. “Why are we assaulted by… love?”</p>
<p>Ronan snorted at him. “It’s Valentine’s Day, idiot, where the fuck have you been?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Does Love Smell Like?

**Author's Note:**

> Pining idiots and some amortentia.

Adam walked into Potions on a Thursday completely unaware of Professor Cresswell’s lesson plans. He’d been sick with a bug the last few days, and the nurse had waved him away with a concoction that didn’t work immediately. Adam had been sick for three days before he decided to stay in the dungeons and skip all his classes. That was yesterday, and Gansey had meticulously gathered Adam’s homework and given it to Reece, so Adam would not fall behind and receive a bad grade. Gansey had, however, forgotten to mention one key detail about their Potions class. A key detail that Adam had forgotten because he’d been ill for four days.

So he walked into the Potions classroom and was assaulted not only by giant pink and red hearts everywhere, but also by tiny little cupids, holding arrows and flying around the room. He stood in front of the door, dumbfounded, as the other students filed into the room and took their seats, ignoring the horrifying decoration.

Then, Adam felt a tap on his shoulder and turned his head to see Ronan standing next to him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ronan pushed at Adam’s shoulders and gently guided him towards the seats they normally occupy during Potions. If Adam hadn’t been staring around the room, he’d have felt his heart flutter at Ronan’s casual touch. But fortunately for him, he was too preoccupied to become flustered.

“What the hell is going on, Lynch?” Adam asked, eyes following one particular cupid, who looked very much like an evil imp. “Why are we assaulted by… love?”

Ronan snorted at him. “It’s Valentine’s Day, idiot, where the fuck have you been?”

“Sick,” Adam answered, finally dragging his eyes away from the cupids to look at Ronan. “Didn’t Gansey tell you?”

“He did tell me,” Ronan said, a flicker of concern in his face. “You’re ok now?”

Adam nodded.

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Ronan continued. “You know ‘The Great Holiday.’”

Adam groaned. How could he have forgotten about Valentine’s Day? It was, by far, Professor Cresswell’s favorite holiday. She celebrated every single year, although the decorations had never been so extravagant before. “What’s up this year?” Adam asked, eyes wandering back again to the hearts on the wall.

“She got married in October,” Ronan said. “Remember?”

Oh. Right. The professor was in love, and of course she’d celebrate more when she had someone to share it with.

Next to Adam, Ronan was playing with his wand, looking too comfortable in the awful surroundings. “You really forgot Valentine’s Day?” Ronan asked.

Adam shrugged. “I’ve been sick.”

“I guess when you don’t have anyone to celebrate with, it doesn’t matter right?” Ronan continued, not looking at Adam. “Who even fucking cares.”

Adam refrained from letting Ronan know that he--Ronan-- didn’t have a date for Valentine’s Day either, and that perhaps Ronan should stop pointing fingers and find himself a date instead. Except Adam didn’t want to say that, in fear that Ronan would go and find a date, and then Adam would be forced to watch Ronan with his date. Adam really didn’t want that to happen.

“Your tie is crooked,” Adam grumbled instead, and forced himself not to pout at the thought of Ronan dating.

Ronan reached up and messed up his tie even more. “Better?”

“Fuck you,” Adam responded. He thought briefly of reaching over and fixing Ronan’s tie himself, of the shocked look on Ronan’s face if that did happen, but he quickly rid himself of that thought. His hands would shake too much anyways, Ronan’s tie would remain crooked.

“Guys, already?” Gansey dropped down on the seat next to Adam and Adam turned--not happily, but at least relieved--to greet his best friend. “Can’t you wait until class is over to fight?”

“We’re not fighting,” Ronan said from Adam’s other side. “We’re talking, right Parrish?”

Sighing, Adam agreed. Then, “Why didn’t you remind me it would be Valentine’s Day?”

Gansey looked slightly embarrassed as he responded. “It slipped my mind?”

“He’s been pining after Sargent,” Ronan said. “If he spends any more time trying to figure out her schedule, he’ll be a stalker.”

“I’m not a stalker,” Gansey responded heatedly. “I just wanted to figure out the perfect moment to ask her out…”

“Did you?” Adam asked, as kindly as he could. Although he and Blue were friendly--and had dated once, in third year… terrible idea--he could not see how Gansey could be happy with her.

“No,” Gansey replied, deflating. “I couldn’t bring myself to ask.”

“Because she hates you,” Ronan was leaning back on his chair as he said this, and unlike Adam, his voice had no false kindness lacing it. “Look man, you dodged a bullet.”

Adam sighed as Gansey’s face morphed into one of hurt. “Look, Gansey, there’s always next year.”

Gansey looked from Ronan to Adam. “Yeah,” he said, not very hopefully. “There’s always next year.”

Professor Cresswell walked into the classroom then, effectively putting an end to their conversation. Although she was young and unusually chipper for a teacher, most of the students respected her enough to give her their full attention, at least, during the first few minutes of the class. Today, Professor Cresswell was dressed in a red robe and looked overwhelmingly excited.

At her entrance, the cupids stopped circling the room and leaned against the classroom walls, motionless.

“And here are my fifth years,” Professor Cresswell said with a bright smile. “I have such a surprise for you.”

Adam leaned in to whisper in Gansey’s ear. “Wait, she didn’t tell you guys what we were gonna do?”

“Nah,” Gansey whispered back. “She just said the word surprise a lot.”

Professor Cresswell waved her wand, and the table in the very front of the room began to move forward. There was a large cloth covering several very lumpy objects on top of the table and Adam focused his attention on that.

“As you all must know by now,” Professor Cresswell continued. “It is Valentine’s Day, and although you are all too young to get into my NEWT level class and make this potion yourselves, I see nothing wrong with sharing it with you.”

She flicked her wand again and the tablecloth fell back to reveal five brass cauldrons, all covered with lids. In front of the cauldrons, someone had set up several glass vials with lids, although the vials were empty.

“I have prepared, with a lot of difficulty I might add, five cauldrons of a certain kind of love potion,” She continued. “And today, we’re going to smell them. Now, who can tell me the name of the most powerful love potion in existence?”

Adam’s hand shot upwards without a second thought. Next to him, Ronan snorted.

After looking around the room and finding no other hands raised, Professor Cresswell acknowledged Adam with a nod. “Mr. Parrish?”

“The most powerful love potion in the wizarding world is called Amortentia,” Adam said. “It has a mother-of-pearl sheen and steam rises out of it in a very distinct way.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parrish, five points to Slytherin,” Professor Cresswell said. “Now, Amortentia is a very dangerous and powerful potion, so you are all forbidden from tasting it, however, as I said earlier, I want you to smell it,” she paused and looked around the room, looking thoughtful. “Mr. Parrish, do you care to tell us why the smell of Amortentia is important?”

Adam tried his best not to preen at her complinet. “Amortentia has a different smell depending on who is smelling it. It smells like whatever the person finds most attractive, even if they themselves are not aware of the attraction.”

“Thank you, again Mr. Parrish,” Professor Cresswell said. “Today is the day for love, and I thought, what better way to celebrate than smelling the thing we find most appealing? I’ll pour out some of the potion for every table and will call the person on the aisle seat to come here and pick up a vial. Write down what you smell, by the way, it’ll be important later.”

The table with the potions moved back to the wall at the very front of the classroom and Professor Cresswell followed it. Adam watched her movements as she opened each cauldron and poured the potion carefully into the glass vials, replacing each vial’s lid as it filled with the white liquid. When she had finished filling up enough glass containers, the table moved forward again, and she began calling students forward for the potion.

It was Ronan who stood up to get the potion for their desk, but Ronan did not want to smell the contents of the vial.

“I don’t fucking trust it,” he said as he handed the potion to Adam, saying he’d smell the thing last if he really had to.

Adam considered the potion for a second and handed it to Gansey. “You go first.”

Gansey frowned but did not protest. He carefully unscrewed the lid and sniffed the contents inside. His countenance, at first suspicious, shifted slowly to one of wonder and delight. He sniffed the potion again, seeming lost in the scent and unaware of his surroundings.

Adam watched him closely, and when a moment passed and Gansey remained dazed, he reached out a hand and shook Gansey’s shoulder. “Hey, you there?”

Gansey’s gaze shifted towards Adam, and whatever spell had overtaken him seemed broken. He replaced the lid on the vial and handed it to Adam. “Yeah, I’m here. It just smelled really good.”

Accepting the potion from Gansey, Adam said, “Yeah, that’s its job.” Then he unscrewed the lid.

He smelled it immediately. The potion was emitting the most overwhelming scent Adam had ever experienced. He closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of parchment, of freshly fallen rain, black tea, and…

Adam opened his eyes, gaze shifting quickly towards Ronan and back again to the potion. He could smell Ronan. Not his cologne or whatever soap he might use, not the generic products that someone might find at a department store, but the smell that was uniquely _Ronan._ How he smelled after a day out in the sun, or after quidditch practice. How he smelled when his arm wrapped around Adam’s shoulder and his hand touched Adam’s face. Adam closed his eyes again and inhaled, chasing Ronan’s scent within the potion and feeling his breathing slow down, feeling his senses shift to only the steam rising out of the vial. He could sit in that classroom and smell the potion forever.

“Parrish, did you lose your mind?” Ronan’s voice broke Adam out of the potion’s fantasy, and he quickly opened his eyes, pushing the vial away from himself and replacing the lid. He handed it off to Ronan without even looking at him, and dropped his head on the desk.

He had to write down what he’d smelled. He had to take up his pen and write down on his homework that he had smelled Ronan Lynch in Amortentia.

Adam felt his face heating up, his clothes felt uncomfortable and restraining around him, and he suddenly wanted to be anywhere but in Potions.

Next to him, Gansey was telling Ronan to put the potion away. Adam lifted his head slowly, glancing at Ronan. Ronan seemed less affected by the potion than both Gansey and Adam had been, and Adam itched to ask him why.

“How was it?” Gansey asked, directing the question towards both Adam and Ronan. “What did you smell?”

“What did _you_ smell?” Ronan countered. “Blue Sargent’s shampoo?” He smirked knowingly at Adam, as if they were both in on the joke.

Adam returned his smirk with a weak smile. “No, Ronan, obviously it was her bodywash.”

Gansey glared at both of them. “It was not _just_ her shampoo,” he said, annoyed. “It was her _hair._ How it smells even when you can’t smell the shampoo.”

Ronan burst out in laughter, and even Adam cracked a smile. “How do you know what her hair smells like?”

Gansey shrugged. “I’ve been around her?”

“That’s fucking creepy, Dick,” Ronan said.

Gansey threw a wadded piece of paper at Ronan’s head but missed. “What did you smell then?”

“None of your fucking business,” Ronan sounded a bit aloof, but there was an edge in his voice, like he actually wanted to hide this from Adam and Gansey. “It was private.”

Gansey shrugged, and surprised Adam by turning towards him. “What did you smell?”

“Tea and that smell that comes out of the dirt after rain,” Adam responded quickly, then, “And parchment, like really old ones, the smell you get when you open a used book,” he paused then, unable to share the last part with Gansey. “And one more thing,” he finished.

“Well?” Gansey asked after it became apparent that Adam was not going to go on. “What was the last thing?”

Adam thought of the smell again, of the scent that was quintessentially Ronan, and his cheeks began to heat. “I’m not sure I can word it right.”

“Try?” Gansey asked. On Adam’s other side, Ronan was quiet, his gaze fixed on Adam’s reddening cheeks.

Adam thought about it for a moment. He couldn’t write down that the fourth and strongest scent Amortentia had produced for him was that of Ronan Lynch. It would be too embarrassing, too revealing. It was not something he wished to share with Professor Cresswell or any of his classmates. So it was in his best interest to try to put the scent into words.

He decided to try it. “It smelled like warmth. Like when the sun hits your skin for too long and you bring up your hand to smell it? That’s what it was. But it was more than that, it was a bit like the kind of smoke smell you get from wood stoves on autumn nights… the kind you find on farms, and also feathers. Smelled like feathers.”

“Bird feathers?” Gansey asked.

“What other kind of feathers are there, Gansey?” Ronan spoke up, his voice was strange, like there was a lump in his throat and he was struggling to speak.

“And blood,” Adam finished quietly. “It was all of that mixed together, it was all one scent.”

Gansey looked perplexed. “What smells like that?”

Adam didn’t correct the “what” to a “who,” and was glad that Ganey hadn’t made that leap. He was also glad that Ronan had gotten over whatever lump was in his throat, and was currently telling Gansey that Adam was attracted to more sophisticated smells. “Unlike you, Dick,” Ronan continued. “What did you say Sargent’s shampoo smelled like?”

Ronan was shifting the conversation away from Adam, and Adam was so very relieved. He didn’t understand why Ronan was doing it, but Adam didn’t care. His heart had beat loudly in his chest as he’d listed the individual things that combined to make up Ronan’s scent, and was only beginning to slow to a normal beat.

“Enough, Ronan,” Gansey said, as Ronan continued to tease him about Blue. “What did you smell anyways?”

“I don’t plan on telling you,” Ronan said. “Stop fucking asking.”

“But why?” Adam spoke up, surprised at Ronan’s stubborn refusal to share this with them. “We both told you.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Ronan countered. At Gansey’s hurt expression and Adam’s raised eyebrows, he continued, “Look, I really just don’t want to tell you. Can you drop it?”

Adam shrugged and conceded. He needed to write down his Amortentia experience anyways. He was curious to know what Ronan smelled, wondered even, whether there was a hint of his own scent in Ronan’s potion. But Ronan was as stubborn as a mule, and as Adam dipped his quill in the ink and began writing, he figured that Ronan would tell them, at some point.

About half an hour later, when everyone had smelled the Amortentia and written down their experience, Professor Cresswell collected the glass vials and began instructing everyone on their homework. They were to write down the ingredients for Amortentia, find out how the potion was brewed, and find one other love potion and do the same research for the second potion.

“Write down your research on the same parchment you used to describe your individual Amortentia experience and turn it all in next class,” she told them, and with that they were done.

After Potions, Adam left Ronan and Gansey to go to Care of Magical Creatures, making plans to study with them at the library before dinner.

When he arrived at the library, hours later, he found Ronan sitting alone at a desk, dozing.

“Where is Gansey?” Adam asked, dropping his books loudly on the table and startling Ronan out of his nap.

“I don’t, know… fuck,” Ronan grumbled, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Do you have to be so loud?”

“You’re supposed to be doing homework,” Adam said, taking a seat. “I’m doing you a service.”

“Whatever, man,” Ronan said, and took up his quill. “This Potions assignment is bullshit.”

Adam agreed about the assignment, but he didn’t tell Ronan that. Instead, he took out his Charms homework and began to write.

Half an hour later, Ronan stretched and stood up. At Adam’s quizzical glance, he said, “Need to piss.” And with that, he was gone.

Adam glanced at his empty seat. For over a year now, he’d been ignoring the fact that he’d began developing romantic feelings for Ronan Lynch. Well, not ignoring per se… he knew they were there, he’d just refused to acknowledge them. He’d never sat down and asked himself, _Do I like Ronan Lynch?_ But after today, after the potion, he could no longer ignore his feelings. Adam liked Ronan. He liked Ronan so much that Ronan’s scent showed up in his Amortentia.

He sighed, his gaze moving from Ronan’s books to his parchment. Without thinking, Adam picked up the roll of parchment and began reading.

It was only after he’d read the second item that Adam realized he was holding Ronan’s Potions homework and what he was reading was a list of the thing Ronan had smelled in the Amortentia.

It was a huge violation of privacy, but Adam had already began reading and could not find it in himself to stop.

The first item was gasoline, which made sense. Ronan was weirdly attracted to muggle cars, to the point where he would ask Adam to get pictures of them for him all the time. During last summer, Ronan had shown up to Adam’s father’s garage where Adam worked, and demanded to be taken on a ride around town. Adam had to explain to him that they were only fifteen and that Adam did not have a license to drive yet. Either way, Adam understood the presence of gasoline in Ronan’s list.

The second made sense too. Ronan had just written down, “The Barns.” Unlike Adam, Ronan’s list did not have much description, but Adam knew instantly what Ronan meant by the second item in his list. The Barns were his home, where he felt most comfortable, of course he’d smell it in his potion.

The last item read “redacted.” Apparently, Ronan did not want to share that last part with his teacher, even if it meant not getting full marks on his assignment. Adam read the list three times before putting the parchment back and waiting for Ronan’s return.

They stayed at the library until dinner, and Gansey showed up about half an hour before they had to leave. Adam left the two of them at the Gryffindor table, and said goodnight right before he left the hall. He’d finished all his homework in the library, so when he returned to the Slytherin common room, he got ready for bed and willed himself to fall asleep.

But he couldn’t. His mind kept returning to the word “redacted,” written in Ronan’s handwriting on a piece of unimportant homework. What could redacted mean? What did Ronan want to hide from the teacher? Was it someone’s smell? Was it someone Ronan liked? Could that someone be Adam?

Adam shook his head and tried to reel in his thoughts. He didn’t know why Ronan had refused to write down the last scent. He didn’t know and he couldn’t ask Ronan because then he’d have to tell Ronan that he’d looked through the homework. There was no point thinking about the smell now, it would remain a mystery.

Anyways, tomorrow would be a new day, and who knew, maybe one day, Ronan would share that last bit of information with him.

Adam fell asleep thinking of the smell of The Barns and feathers flying around a messy room.

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this was originally a small side fic set in an au fic that my friend and I WERE writing until SOMEONE decided she didn't want to write it anymore. Anyways this was finished so I figured I would share it. If one day, that someone --who shall remain nameless-- decides to pick up our Hogwarts au again maybe we'll actually post it.
> 
> Also I'd like to point out this friend and I sorted all these losers into their houses before the word of god (Stiefvater) sorted them into their houses, my friend and I are legit! 
> 
> comments are much appreciated, let me know what you thought.
> 
> I'm [here](http://waroftheposes.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if anyone wants to come and chat!


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